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Fen Edge Archaeology Group - the story so far

2018
Thursday 18 January
The Bedford Roman Villa Project: community archaeological investigations at Manton Lane and its Roman setting’ by Mike Luke
This talk will describe the discovery and give an account of the investigations to date of a possible Roman villa at Manton Lane, Bedford. Due to the unusual circumstances surrounding its discovery it has only been examined in a piecemeal manner by a mix of professional and community-lead projects.
The recovered evidence indicates that the site contains masonry buildings with painted walls, glazed windows and at least one room which featured an underfloor heating system (hypocaust). In addition, the presence of stucco work, a rare type of decorative moulding found at only a handful of Roman sites in Britain, including Fishbourne Roman Palace, suggests that at least one of the buildings had elaborate internal decoration. Surprisingly, very few villas have been found in the Bedford area and possible reasons for this will be discussed in the talk.
Mike Luke of Albion Archaeology provided professional help and guidance to the project. He spoke to FEAG about 'Life in the Biddenham Loop' in January 2013.
Tuesday 13 February‘Roman glass in Londinium by John Shepherd

In this talk John Shepherd will focus on the Roman glass industry in Londinium.
John Shepherd was recently the academic consultant for the Bloomberg Mithraeum reconstruction project, having published Grimes’s original 1954 excavation back in 1998. He is currently a freelance archaeologist engaged in post-excavation analysis and publication work, mainly in London. He was at the Museum of London for 20 years, as curator of the Grimes London archive then manager of the London Archaeological Archive and research centre. Glass is his passion and he has been studying it since the 1970s. He was closely involved with identifying the evidence for the making of glass vessels in Roman London.

Thursday 15 March

‘A bone to pick: (zoo)archaeology of the Cambridge region’ by Vida Rajkovaca
Animals as economic assets and the relationship between people and animals are only a few themes central to our understanding of past societies, their diet, economy and social rituals. Basics of zooarchaeology will be introduced first, by looking at what we study and how we exploit the evidence from the animal bone. This talk will then give a broad overview of the current status of faunal record we have for the region, by discussing a range of environmental, socio-economic and cultural changes that were taking place across the region over time.
Originally trained in Palaeolithic zooarchaeology and the Pleistocene fauna in the Balkans, Vida now works as the zooarchaeologist for the CAU. With over ten years of experience working in the commercial sector, Vida has studied assemblages from prehistoric rural settlements, Romano-British sites both within Cambridge and on the outskirts, as well as from city centre sites. Vida especially enjoys studies of butchery practices as one of the main tools to understand a range social rituals of collective food procurement and sharing. Tuesday 10 April‘Before the flood: the late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of the Fenland’ by Lawrence Billington
This talk provides an overview of the hunter gatherer communities who lived in and around what is now the Fenland, from the earliest colonisation by small groups of hunters at the end of the last glacial maximum (c. 12,700 BC) until the beginning of the Neolithic (c. 4000 BC). This is a timespan that saw major changes in climate, sea-levels, flora and fauna and the record of archaeological activity will be related to increasingly detailed understandings of these environmental changes. The talk will emphasise the effects of changing landscapes on the lifeways of Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and explore the special opportunities that the Fens offer for studies of this period.
Lawrence Billington recently completed a PhD on the Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of Eastern England and is currently a project officer at Oxford Archaeology EastThursday 17 May‘Stonehenge: new discoveries’ by Mike Parker-Pearson
In the last 15 years, research on Stonehenge has revealed a wealth of new evidence about this enigmatic monument and its builders. Discoveries at Stonehenge and surrounding sites include new information of the people buried there, the houses that they lived in, and relationships of Stonehenge to its surrounding landscape. New scientific techniques such as analysis of ancient DNA and isotopes have also transformed our understanding of who these people were. Geological studies have also paved the way for archaeological excavations at some of Stonehenge’s distant quarries in Wales, to cast light on the mystery of when and why some of its monoliths were brought from so far away. Mike Parker Pearson is Professor of British Later Prehistory at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology in London. Since 2003 he has been leading a multidisciplinary team investigating Stonehenge, and has also worked in many different parts of the world, from Greece and the Middle East to Madagascar and Easter Island, during his career as an archaeologist.Monday 10 September 2018 at 7.30'A Landscape Through Time: Archaeology of the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme' by Tony WalshNB: This meeting takes place at Histon Baptist Church, Station Road, Histon, CB24 9LN and is a joint meeting between FEAG and the Histon and Impington Archaeology Group.
This illustrated talk explores the evidence uncovered so far, including prehistoric henge monuments, industrial Roman kilns and Saxon settlements and will focus on the eastern end of the scheme near Cambridge.
Tony Walsh, one of four Project Managers for MOLA Headland Infrastructure working on the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme on behalf of Highways England, discusses the archaeological findings from one of the UK’s largest infrastructure projects, which brings together the skills and knowledge of over 250 archaeologists.Wednesday 3 October‘The Relhan collection: recording south Cambridgeshire’s antiquities in the early 19th century’by Alison Taylor
Richard Relhan was an apothecary who worked in Cambridge in the early 19th century and was able to devote time to travelling around south Cambridgeshire in a horse and cart, making water colour record drawings of attractive sites and buildings in many villages. There are over 300 of these drawings, many illustrating church monuments and scenes of topographic interest. Unusual items include Barnwell Priory and the Cellarers’ Chequer, Anglesey Abbey and Bartlow Hills. As the drawings were made before Victorian repairs etc were made to churches, and when memorials were still comparatively fresh, the drawings are a valuable historic record. They now belong to Cambridge Antiquarian Society. The University Library has digitised the drawings on behalf of the Society, whose members will prepare notes on many of the monuments recorded, and all will be made publicly available.
Alison Taylor was the first County Archaeologist for the new county of Cambridgeshire, responsible for creating a Sites and Monuments Record, protecting sites through the Planning process, management of important field monuments, educational programmes and extensive excavations. She wrote two volumes on the archaeology of Cambridgeshire for the County Council and was Editor of the Proceedings of Cambridge Antiquarian Society from 1996 to 2006.
(NB: Meeting at Landbeach Village Hall)

Thursday 22 November‘Herculaneum: an archaeological postcard from the Edge’ by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill2017

Thursday 19 January ‘Archaeology and genetics in Oceania: the history of humans and their crops in the Pacific’ by Andrew Clarke

The islands of Oceania (or the Pacific Ocean) are fascinating places to study human history. The Pacific Ocean covers one third of the Earth’s surface and, although dominated by water, contains some 25,000 islands. The majority of these islands were either inhabited in prehistory (the pre-European era) or show evidence of prehistoric human contact. Oceania is the location of some of the oldest human migration events (e.g., New Guinea) and some of the most recent (e.g., New Zealand). This lecture will describe how archaeology and genetics are being combined to understand how humans have moved across the Pacific, the tempo and mode of crop selection, and how agriculture has spread across a vast island world. Some areas of current research and unresolved questions in the human history of the Pacific will also be discussed.
Andrew Clarke is an Early Career Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.

Tim will be talking about his research exploring the adaptations and behaviour of Neanderthals and Modern Humans against a background of changing climate. Excavations at Shanidar Cave (in Iraqi Kurdistan) have yielded evidence for occupation by Neanderthals and modern humans. A number of Neanderthal burials were recovered that showed care for elderly and injured individuals. Recent discoveries of interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans and a late date for the spread of the latter into Europe make sites such as Shanidar key to understanding the nature of Neanderthal/Homo sapiens relations and to answering the question of what happened to the Neanderthals. What was responsible for the demise of Neanderthals?
Tim Reynolds is a senior lecturer at Birkbeck College, London, and is a former county archaeologist for Cambridgeshire. He is currently preparing a book on the origin and spread of modern humans, completing work on the site of the Haua Fteah, Libya and planning renewed investigations for Shanidar cave, Iraq.

Thursday 16 March ‘Excavations at Northstowe’ by Alison Dickens
NB: The venue for this talk is Rampton Village Hall

In this talk Alison Dickens will talk about the excavations prior to the development of Northstowe – what was found during Phase 1 and the early stages of Phase 2 and looking forward to further work. Phase 1 is on the site of the old golf course near Longstanton and the archaeology there was completed in late 2015. Evidence was found for occupation in the Iron Age, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods. The Romano-British hamlet found in Phase 1 seems to have been a ‘standard’ Roman rural settlement, as actually a second Roman settlement has already been identified in Phase 2, just half a kilometre away to the south and potentially around the same size as Roman Cambridge. FEAG members spent two weeks digging on part of the Romano-British settlement in 2015. As part of the second phase of excavations, there will be community work, open days, and work with primary schools.

FEAG has been working for over 6 years at the Twenty Pence Project site near the scheduled site of Bullocks Haste just outside Cottenham. Based on our fieldwork and analysis by specialists, the site seems to have been a modest, small-scale agricultural site based on arable farming and animal husbandry. There is little evidence for structures, trade or industrial activities, though it is possible that local pottery production occurred not far away. The site was probably in use throughout the Roman period.

In this talk, John Stanford will present an overview of TPP activities and developments in the last 12 months and invite reflections on what the project might mean to archaeological understanding of the fen edge, its impact on FEAG and on individuals involved.

The early 14th century sculptures of the Lady Chapel were intended to be a definitive statement of what a devotee of the Blessed Virgin Mary should know. They were badly damaged during the 1540s in attacks on the images and practices of traditional religion. They were covered with thick whitewash for over three hundred years while the Chapel was in use as a parish church. Campaigns of cleaning, repair and conservation since the 1850s have restored the sculptures to our sight but not necessarily to our understanding: their mutilated state makes it difficult to read and appreciate them, the non-scriptural narratives that they illustrate are quite unfamiliar to many people. Even today they can be an uneasy reminder of England’s Catholic past and of its violent end. The talk will identify of some of the sculptures and describe how the tide turned from condemnation to conservation.
Jonathan Rogers is a specialised Guide at Ely Cathedral and the author of "Ely Cathedral: The Sculptures of the Lady Chapel" published in 2015 by The Ely Society.

This talk will review the more than 20 years of fieldwork in the Needingworth Quarry and what it tells of the Ouse's role in prehistory. Beyond this, it will also consider the recent findings forthcoming from the HLF Partnership Programme at both Earith and Manea. Finally, it will raise the question 'where next?' and explore possible future research initiatives.
Christopher Evans is Executive Director of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. He has worked in British archaeology at a senior level for more than 25 years. He has published widely and directed a number of overseas fieldwork projects (Nepal, China & Cape Verde), and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Thursday 23 November 'Anglo-Saxon settlementalong A14 upgrade and the impending excavation of a Mercian "Kings enclsure"

2016

January
‘Archaeology and Genetics in Oceania: the History of Humans and Their Crops in the Pacific’ by Andrew ClarkeApril
‘Archaeology, ancient DNA and the changing nature of the horse-human relationship in Prehistory’ by Mim Bower

Archaeology, ancient DNA and the changing nature of the horse-human relationship in Prehistory’ by Mim Bower

The talk will present the main members of the trafficking network dealing in looted and smuggled antiquities, contra the 1970 UNESCO convention and will highlight connections between dealers, auction houses, private collectors and museums. Christos will also make use of photographic evidence from confiscated archives of illicit antiquities dealers why antiquities should be repatriated and dealers and museum curators be prosecuted.

Christos Tsirogiannis is a forensic archaeologist researching smuggled antiquities and the market for looted cultural objects. He is a Senior Archaeologist at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. He studied archaeology and history of art in Greece and worked for the Greek Ministries of Culture and Justice from 1994 to 2008, excavating throughout Greece and recording antiquities in private hands. He was a member of the Greek Task Force Team that repatriated looted, smuggled and stolen antiquities from the Getty Museum and other collections. Since 2007, Christos has been identifying illicit antiquities, depicted in the confiscated Medici, Becchina and Symes-Michaelides archives, in museums, galleries, auction houses and private collections, notifying the relevant government authorities.

FEAG talk: Wednesday 13 April, 7.30 pm, Cottenham Village College (Tony Cooper Suite or Common Room, tbc)
‘Archaeology, ancient DNA and the changing nature of the horse-human relationship in Prehistory’ by Mim Bower
Mim Bower pioneered the use of ancient DNA in archaeology at Cambridge and has an eclectic research career including studies on the spread of agriculture into Europe and the origins of grape varieties, but the bulk of her research has been on the genetic consequences of the domestication of horses. Some of her more notable findings include the discovery of an imposter in the Thoroughbred General Studbook and the characterisation of a gene which predicts speed in race horses. This talk presents the results of a large-scale study of horse genetic diversity across the Eurasian continent and explores the changing nature of the relationship between horses and humans from Prehistory to the present day.

FEAG talk: Wednesday 18 May, 7.30 pm, at the Tony Cooper Suite, Cottenham VillageCollege
‘Looting Matters: Returning Archaeological Material to Greece and Italy’ by David Gill
Since 2006 several hundred objects have been returned to Italy and to Greece from major North American public collections, auction-houses and private collectors. This has been the result of research on three main photographic archives seized by police in Greece and in Switzerland. This co-called 'Medici Conspiracy' has placed the international movement of archaeological material in the spotlight.
Professor David Gill is Professor of Archaeological Heritage and Director of the Heritage Futures Research Unit at University Campus Suffolk. He was previously a member of the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Reader in Mediterranean Archaeology at Swansea University.

FEAG talk: Thursday 22 September, 7.30 pm, At Willingham Baptist Church, GeorgeSt, Willingham, Cambridge CB24 5LJ
‘Landscape Survey in East Kent’ by Lacey Wallace
A large site in east Kent is raising questions about how the Roman imperial administration and military functioned in Britain. It is also shows that our categorisations of sites as ‘rural’, ‘villa’, ‘roadside settlement’, ‘industrial complex’, ‘military depot’ and ‘ritual/funerary’ are much more blurred than we might think. At this site, there are aspects of all of these categories. Its location, at the conjunction of the road that once connected the urban centre at Canterbury with the urban and military centre at Richborough and with the waterways of east Kent, was ideal for communication and transport from the Continent and to the rest of Britain. The landscape was dominated by Bronze Age barrows, which were probably of symbolic significance to the pre-Roman Iron Age population, but an enormous round barrow in this area may date to the Roman period. By the early third century, roadside industry was connected to a large storage and distribution complex with connections to the imperial administration.
Dr Wallace is a Research Associate in Roman Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. She conducts research on the archaeology of the western Roman Empire. She is currently the Principal Investigator of The Canterbury Hinterland Project.

FEAG talk: Thursday 24 November, 7.30 pm, at the Tony Cooper Suite, Cottenham Village College
‘Did Neolithic people really hate fish? – stories from the world of palaeodietary analysis’ by Tamsin O’Connell
Tamsin O’Connell started academic life as a chemist at the University of Oxford. The lure of applied science led her to archaeology, working with Prof Robert Hedges at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art in Oxford. She joined the Department in Cambridge in 2004 to set up an isotope and palaeodiet laboratory, now called the Dorothy Garrod Laboratory. Her research traces signals of diet and climate in human and animal tissues, using isotopic analysis.

January 2015

Talk: ‘What did ancient people think about death?’ by Rob Wiseman

November 2014

Talk: ‘Bronze Age copper mining in the British Isles’ by Simon Timberlake followed by AGM